PAUL O’GRADY is well on his way to becoming a national treasure. His quirky teatime show, packed with dogs, children, old people and mega-stars is back today and continues to top every ratings battle going.

But Paul, who was born and bred in Birkenhead, found fame late in life and spent years as a barman, a social worker and a court usher. Oh, and Britain’s top female impersonator.

Now for the first time, he’s writing down his adventures in an autobiography. But, it seems, he’s having trouble fitting it all in...

“Lord Of The Rings didn’t take this long,” laughs Paul, 52. “I wouldn’t mind, but they asked me where I was up to now, and I said, in deadly seriousness: ‘I’m 11.’ They said: ‘Hang on a minute – you’ve done nearly 70,000 words, and you’re 11?’

“So I’m doing it up to when I left Liverpool and moved to London. So the aim is then to write a second one, with all the showbizzy stuff. It’s too much, it really is.

“I’ve found it very interesting. You find out things that were staring you in the face, but the penny never really dropped. It’s amazing what you don’t notice. Like, my mother was a dreadful snob. Dreadful. And I said to my sister: ‘Do you think mum was a snob?’ And she said: ‘No! No!’ And then a couple of days later she rang me, she’d been thinking, and she said: ‘She was shocking!’ But she really was.

“And up until the age of 11, I didn’t have a Scouse accent. I was beautifully spoken, because I went to St Anton’s, which was a private school. And then when I left that, and went to Corpus Christi, which was a secondary modern, and a bit of a sink school, all of a sudden I turned broad Scouse.”

In the book Paul talks about his love of boxing.

“Yeah, I went to BAB – Birkenhead Amateur Boxers,” he says. “But one day my dad said: ‘You’re not going any more. You’re too violent.’

“My dad was a nice, gentle Irishman, and he was having none of it. But yeah, I did used to box at school. I was good at it as well. ”

So what was Liverpool like back then?

“Oh, it was great. It was a thriving dock back then. I was working in bars, and it was like the League of Nations there, with all the sailors from all over the world.

“That’s where Lily was born. I was at a party on a Chinese ship, and when I went in to work the next day, somebody said: ‘Oh, here’s Shanghai Lil.’ So at the age of 18 in Liverpool, I was known as Shanghai Lil. And it stuck.”

Looking back over your life so far, what’s been your happiest time?

“Well, in this book, which goes up to when I went to London, I’d say the teen years were the best,” he ponders.

“I was living at home, everything was done for me. And I forgot how exciting Liverpool used to be.

“We were out all of the time – it was a real party atmosphere. I seemed to spend every night in a club. It was uncomplicated.”

Paul’s daughter Sharyn, who still lives in Merseyside, gave birth to son Abel here in 2006. Paul is clearly a doting grandfather.

“He’s gorgeous,” laughs Paul. “He’s 14 months – he’s crawling and stuff. He’s just a lovely little kid. He got very clingy to me, while he was here. It’s nice, as soon as I’d walk in the kitchen, he’d put his arms up. My daughter would say “Oh, here we go. I can see trouble here!’

Your series is about to return. Are you looking forward to it?

“You know that back-to-school feeling? It’s like that,” he says. “I’m not jumping about clapping my hands – far from it. But once I get back to it, it’s like I was never off, and I love it. It’s very strange. It just comes naturally.

“I love The Paul O’Grady Show, I’m just given a free-rein. And with the guests, I just ask the things I want to know about them. Although it gets to me after a while. I start to feel like an elderly relative, and they’re all coming to visit me and tell me what they’ve been up to. ‘Oh I’m just back from LA,’ ‘Oh, I’ve just starred in a film’, ‘Oh I’ve just released a new album’ and I think: ‘I’ve just sat here with a dog.’